why gen-uri-delims in Python?

[Jeff Trawick]

It says:
  # USAGE:
  #   $ gen-uri-delims.py > uri/uri_delims.h
  #
  # typically invoked by the "buildconf" script
A distributed uri_delims.h would be broken on a non-ASCII box.  And yet python 
is not to be required in order to build a source distribution.